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Leon Scott18 February 2019

How To Use Your Influence - Leon Scott - #052

1Frameworks
14Insights

Frameworks in this episode

Influence5 steps

Play The Game To Earn The Message

Satisfy the platform's rules first, then spend the attention you earn on what matters.

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Insights & moments

The myth-busts, hot takes, explainers, and tools worth keeping.

Myth Buster· 1

Myth Buster

Ten hours of meditation is a marathon, not a rest

Williamson describes a retreat at a Tibetan temple at Belsay over Christmas, aiming for ten cumulative hours of practice a day. He got to six and had nothing left in the tank. He acknowledges how strange that sounds given meditation looks like sitting still, but argues that a day spent noticing thoughts, labelling them and returning to the breath is genuinely exhausting.

  • The target was ten hours of cumulative daily practice; he reached six
  • Williamson compares the depletion to running a marathon
  • The difficulty is the repeated returning, not the sitting
  • Assuming it is easy because it looks passive is the error

“It's like doing a marathon. It's terrible, it really is.”

Chris Williamson
#meditation#retreat#mental training

Hot Take· 2

Hot Take

A problem arriving is a training opportunity, not a setback

Scott's default response to difficulty is to label it practice. Where his instinct once was that he could not deal with something, it is now that the problem is a chance for his mind to get stronger — and that without the problem, no strengthening happens. He credits this with fewer sendings-off as an aggressive centre-mid and with winning the mental battles on the pitch.

  • Difficulty is reframed as a rep rather than an obstacle
  • Without the problem there is no mechanism for the mind to strengthen
  • He reports fewer disciplinary problems in football since practising
  • He applies the same frame in the gym and at work

“This problem's come up, so this is a perfect opportunity for my mind to tackle this problem... Without this problem, my mind wouldn't get stronger.”

Leon Scott
#mindset#reframing#football#resilience
Hot Take

Why meditation still reads as unmanly in the north of England

Both men are from Teesside and note that meditation was not discussed where they grew up. Scott says his younger self would have pictured men in dresses and dismissed it. Williamson contrasts it with a Los Angeles context where it reads as fashionable. Their shared point: the British instinct to treat everything as a bit rubbish is precisely the argument for doing the practice.

  • Scott's younger self would have found it embarrassing and uncool
  • Geography and culture shape whether the practice reads as credible
  • The weather and the traffic cannot be changed; the response to them can
  • The reflex to complain is itself the case for training the mind

“You go to the gym and you're working on your outer look. How about try and work on your inner look?”

Leon Scott
#mindfulness#culture#stigma#masculinity

Explainer· 4

Explainer

The e-com rail: what 80-90% of modelling work actually is

Williamson and Scott puncture the glamour of commercial modelling. The overwhelming majority of the work is e-commerce — one model, a photographer, maybe a stylist, and a rail of forty or fifty garments shot against an infinity board. Both describe the same ritual of calculating minutes-per-garment to estimate an escape time, only for another fifty items to arrive.

  • Williamson estimates 80-90% of modelling work is e-commerce
  • The setup is a studio, an infinity board and a rail of garments
  • Both men independently describe timing themselves per t-shirt
  • It is the only part of the job either calls real work

“That's the only time that for me modelling ever feels like work.”

Chris Williamson
#modelling#e-commerce#industry reality
Explainer

Thoughts: you either identify with them or suppress them

Drawing on a Shinzen Young book, Williamson frames two failure modes for a difficult thought — identifying with it, or suppressing it. Suppression is a cloth over the cage, not a resolution. Identification means jumping in. The third option is accepting it and letting it go. Scott's report from his own practice is that the thoughts still arrive; the connection to them has weakened.

  • Attachment and suppression are both ways of not dealing with the thought
  • Suppression is described as putting a cloth over the cage
  • Scott's thoughts still come, but he identifies with them less
  • Williamson's deeper practice increased his capacity to handle thoughts, not their absence

“The thoughts will always come, but the connections with the thoughts for me has got weaker.”

Leon Scott
#meditation#thoughts#acceptance#psychology
Explainer

The bucket that overflows and the hot coal you refuse to drop

Scott describes irritation as a bucket filling through the morning — you stand on a plug, you lose your toothbrush, you cannot find your keys — until a light turning red triggers an outburst wildly out of proportion. The fix is emptying the bucket at each step. Williamson pairs it with the classic image of anger as holding a hot coal to throw at someone else.

  • Small unreleased irritations accumulate until a trivial trigger overflows them
  • The outburst is caused by the build-up, not the final trigger
  • Anger is holding a hot coal in the hope of throwing it at someone
  • If you could see the thought hurting you, you would drop it instantly

“If a thought's hurting you and bringing you pain, why is them walking around with it?”

Leon Scott
#anger#emotional regulation#mindfulness
Explainer

The hedonic treadmill: lottery winners and accident victims converge

Williamson cites the finding that people who win the lottery and people who lose the use of their legs report the same self-rated happiness roughly six months later — both adapt back to a baseline. Scott connects it to what he is learning in his meditation course: attachments produce temporary happiness and then renewed wanting, so the next car simply generates a want for the one after.

  • Both groups diverge sharply then return to baseline within about six months
  • Material acquisition produces temporary rather than durable happiness
  • Attachment reliably generates the next want
  • Neither man argues against enjoying nice things — only against outsourcing happiness to them

“Attachments will eventually cause suffering and pain.”

Leon Scott
#happiness#hedonic adaptation#attachment#psychology

Story· 3

Story

Six years as a support worker while flying out to model

Scott spent six years working full-time supporting people with autism and learning difficulties, helping them get up, take the bus, get to college and visit family. In the same period he was being flown to Ibiza and Las Vegas for brand shoots. He describes the whiplash between the two as the thing that taught him most about himself.

  • Full-time support work ran alongside the modelling for roughly six years
  • He deliberately worked in the house with younger, more active tenants so he could take them to the gym and his football games
  • Returning to the day job after a shoot reset his sense of gratitude
  • The contrast, not the success, is what he credits for the self-knowledge

“Every job I went on, I am still to this day blown away by — I'm getting paid for doing this.”

Leon Scott
#care work#modelling#gratitude#perspective
Story

Inside JD Sports' shoot machine: photographed to live in 20 minutes

Williamson describes the scale of the JD Sports facility in Manchester — parallel alleyways of models facing each other, each with a photographer and stylist, a mezzanine where the digital team works, and garments live on the website twenty minutes after being shot. Scott admits he had to stop himself interrogating the operation so he could actually do his job.

  • Multiple parallel shooting lanes run simultaneously, each fully staffed
  • Photographers crop to spec on the spot and the digital team publishes from a mezzanine
  • A garment can be online and selling twenty minutes after the shot
  • Analytics track sales performance by which model wore the garment

“Something that you photographed 20 minutes ago will be up online ready to sell.”

Chris Williamson
#e-commerce#operations#retail#scale
Story

From badly behaved at school to a Buddhist centre every Monday

Scott was inattentive at school and could not understand why anyone read books. His entry point was Brendon Burchard's The Motivation Manifesto, then the Calm app's free trial and fifteen minutes of guided meditation. He progressed to Googling courses, found a Buddhist centre near Darlington, and now meets a monk who visits his area weekly. What kept him there was that it demonstrably worked.

  • A book, then an app, then a class — each step made the next one plausible
  • He and his best mate laughed at the first session and nearly dismissed it
  • What convinced him was the monk's visible happiness before he had said anything
  • He aims for roughly fifteen minutes a day and is candid that two hours is beyond him

“I put it into practice and it worked, actually. It was like, wow, this shit really works.”

Leon Scott
#meditation#mindfulness#buddhism#habits

Tool· 1

Tool

Scott's recommendations: Calm, Medium and the Motivation Manifesto

Asked for resources, Scott names the Calm app with its seven-day trial as the entry point, Medium for short articles on any topic you want to learn, and Brendon Burchard's The Motivation Manifesto as the book that started him — plus High Performance Habits for goals and getting the best from a team. He also suggests simply finding a local Buddhist centre.

  • Calm — seven-day free trial, his original entry into guided meditation
  • Medium — short reads that adapt to your interests; Williamson calls it superb curation
  • The Motivation Manifesto and High Performance Habits by Brendon Burchard
  • A local Buddhist centre as the in-person step
  • Scott reads in fifteen to thirty minute blocks and says his reading has improved

“Motivation Manifesto is one of the best books I read.”

Leon Scott
#books#apps#meditation#learning

Takeaway· 3

Takeaway

The model is not the main person on the shoot

Scott argues that the attitude he sees on shoots — the model believing they are the centre of the day — misreads the job entirely. The day exists for the brand and the person who designed the clothes. He credits his repeat bookings to conduct rather than looks, and says clients rebook him because the day was easy and did not feel like work.

  • The shoot serves the brand and the designer, not the model
  • Scott says a snotty attitude on set genuinely confused him early on
  • Repeat work came from being easy to work with, not appearance
  • Looks get attention; nothing behind them does not hold it

“I believe that's what got me a lot of work — not always my looks. It was the impression I gave them on the day.”

Leon Scott

“Looks is a big thing... but if there's nothing past that, then it doesn't keep you there.”

Leon Scott
#modelling#professionalism#conduct#reputation
Takeaway

Train attention like a bicep: thirty seconds today, forty tomorrow

Scott maps gym logic onto meditation. You train a bicep repeatedly and it gets stronger; attention works the same way. Thirty seconds today, forty tomorrow. The payoff he reports is that thoughts which used to intrude in the first ten seconds may not surface for four minutes. Williamson names it: progressive overload.

  • Incremental daily increases rather than heroic sessions
  • Intrusive thoughts recede in frequency as capacity grows
  • Scott reassures beginners that arriving thoughts are normal, not failure
  • The mechanism is identical to physical training

“You go to the gym, you train your bicep... it's exactly the same as the mind.”

Leon Scott
#meditation#habits#training#consistency
Takeaway

The litmus test for anyone you idolise online

Williamson offers a test for whoever you follow: set aside the looks and ask whether they hold values you care about, whether they show integrity you would want — and, as the canary in the coal mine, whether you genuinely believe they are happy. Both note they know plenty of people with large followings who are miserable, and Scott is candid that he still has low days himself.

  • Separate attractiveness from values before elevating anyone
  • Perceived happiness is the most revealing single signal
  • Both know many high-following, unhappy people
  • Scott still has bad days; the practice made them more manageable, not absent

“Is it just the fact that they're good looking, or have they actually got values that I care about?”

Chris Williamson
#social media#role models#authenticity#happiness